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Drugs Deal Won't Help
The World's Poor

By

Nick Schulz

Updated Sept. 2, 2003 12:01 a.m. ET

Geneva enjoys a rich history as a center of the Enlightenment. So it's an ironic shame that international trade negotiators huddled near the banks of Lac Leman have turned their backs on science and technology as tools to relieve human suffering.

In a desperate bid to show "progress" on an issue of supposedly vital importance to the world's poor ahead of this month's WTO ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico, those negotiators announced over the weekend that they'd hammered out a deal to attenuate intellectual...